Adult Abilities: A Study of University Extension Students was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Adults learn much better than is commonly believed; this is the conclusion reached by Dr. Herbert Sorenson in a nation-wide study of many thousands of adult students in university extension classes. Dr. Sorenson conducted a personal investigation in the state universities of Virginia, California, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Indiana, and Minnesota, as well as numerous other schools throughout the country that offer courses for adults. His findings, incorporated in this volume, contribute a substantial body of new data on a subject about which too little has been known heretofore.

Aware that categorical thinking imposes restrictions on the ways we communicate, Stephen R. Yarbrough proposes discourse studies as an alternative to rhetoric and philosophy, both of which are structuralistic systems of inquiry.

Discourse studies, Yarbrough argues, does not support the idea that languages, cultures, or conceptual schemes in general adequately describe linguistic competence. He asserts that a belief in languages and cultures "feeds a false dichotomy: either we share the same codes and conventions, achieving community but risking exclusivism, or we proliferate differences, achieving choice and freedom but risking fragmentation and incoherence." Discourse studies, he demonstrates, works around this dichotomy.

Drawing on philosopher Donald Davidson, Yarbrough establishes the idea that community can be a consequence of communication but is not a prerequisite for it. By disassociating our thinking from conceptual schemes, we can avoid the problems that come with believing in an abstract structure that predates any utterance.

Yarbrough also draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism to define how utterances operate in life and to show how utterances are involved with power and how power relates to understanding. His discussion of Michel Meyer's problematology treats the questions implied by a statement as the meaning of the statement.

Yarbrough introduces readers to a credible theoretical framework for focusing on discourse rather than on conceptual schemes that surround it and to the potential advantages of our using this approach in daily life.

Alabamians have always been a singing people. The settlers who moved into the various sections of the state brought with them songs which reflected their national origins and geographical backgrounds, and as they spread into the hills and over the lowlands they created new songs out of the conditions under which they lived. Also, they absorbed songs from outside sources whenever these pieces could be adapted to their sentiments and ways of life. Thus, by a process of memory, composition and recreation they developed a rich body of folk songs. The following collection a part of the effort to discover and preserve these songs.

American Congregations, Volume 2: New Perspectives in the Study of Congregations builds upon the empirical foundation provided by the historical studies in volume 1 of the Congregational History Project. Volume 2 addresses three crucial questions: Where is the congregation located on the broader map of American cultural and religious life? What are the distinctive qualities, tasks, and roles of the congregation or parish in American culture? And, what patterns of leadership characterize American congregations?

Published simultaneously, these two volumes combine engaging historical studies with incisive scholarsly analysis to focus attention on the central role of congregational studies in research and teaching of American religion.

"This two volume study of American congregations is of compelling importance to anyone interested in civil society, community, and belief in contemporary America. . . . Extraordinarily rich in detail."—Association for Research on Non-profit Organizations and Voluntary Action News

"These congregational histories are important pieces of both social and religious history. They tell us much about the convictions and experience of a great variety of people, different styles of leadership and of how these distinctive local cultures both bear and shape the larger traditions they represent."—Gordon Harland, Studies in Religion

"Both volumes of American Congregations resulted from pioneering efforts, and they are timely and useful. They should force American religious historians to ask new questions. . . . Any American religious historian who fails to take this two-volume work seriously in the future will find his or her own scholarship terribly deficient."—Lewis V. Baldwin, Journal of American History

One idiosyncrasy of archaeology in North America is that it is considered a sub-field of cultural anthropology. To explore the dimensions of this situation, editor Alan P. Sullivan assembled a group of practicing archaeologists, each with different expertise, to analyze problems with the current disciplinary arrangement and to recommend changes in practice and pedagogy that might coalesce into a truly archaeological study of the cultural past.
By using the theoretical tension that has arisen between archaeology and cultural anthropology, the contributors illustrate the effectiveness of concepts and methods that have little, if any, overlap with those of the mother discipline.
Archaeological Concepts for the Study of the Cultural Past examines the degree to which the historically close relationship between archaeology and cultural anthropology may actually have inhibited archaeological investigations—particularly of those aspects of the cultural past that may be ethnographically undocumented or incompletely described.

"A classic..., a brilliant interpretation of the origins of mass warfare. In Arms and Men, Walter Millis has helped to explain not only how war has come to dominate our age, but the often troubled, anomalous relationship between the military and the rest of American society. For everyone, from the beginning student to the advanced scholar, there is not a more comprehensive, more stimulating, or more lively introduction to the men, the ideas, the policies, and the forces that have shaped the development of American military power."
--Richard H. Kohn

"In my opinion Arms and Men is a splendid piece of work, clearly organized, well argued and beautifully written. We have long needed an informed and intelligent commentary on the evolution of American military policy; and in Mr. Millis' book we have it. I think that his book will awaken great interest and be widely used. I am sure also that professional students of the subject will find it possible, after reading this book, to see the course of American military affairs with a new perspective. That is one of the great services performed by Mr. Millis. He has covered the whole subject with authority, but - thank heaven - in a short book, in which the arguments are not blunted by unnecessary detail."
--Gordon A. Craig

"This author knows weapons, politics and human nature. His perceptive grasp of these complexes shines in the writing."
--The New York Times